


Sand Memories

by sillita



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Curse Breaking, Gen, and an intern journalist, desert and tombs and stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-05-24 17:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6161194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sillita/pseuds/sillita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Honey, no one wants to babysit a journalist. Even less an intern.'<br/>'I don't need any babysitting,' Arabella straightened her back to seem more confident, 'I can take care of myself. I just want to observe your...' The lady's laughter interrupted her.<br/>'I don't want to be in the shoes of the person that leaves you here without babysitting.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nobody wants an intern

'My name is Arabella Stingbird and I'm...'

'I'm really busy, love.'

'Hi, I'm Bel and...'

'Sorry, no time.'

'Daily Prophet intern, Arabella...'

'So nice to meet you! I have to go.'

'Hey, could anyone tell me where to go?'

'Yeah, yeah,' the man in a sandy turban walked right past her without even looking her way.

'Jerk' mumbled Arabella, she looked around and plunked onto a bench, next to an elderly witch busy reading a map. The witch actually looked like a nice person. She had wrinkles around her eyes and was slightly plump, which gave her a kind of a grandmotherly look, but Bel didn't even try to say anything to her, because she seemed really occupied, as everyone else here, apparently. To the girl's surprise, the lady talked first.

'You should probably go follow the man,' the lady's voice fit her appearance, but there was something in her ironic intonation that didn't quite work with how Arabella imagined her to act. 'He's supposed to take care of you here, Philly gave him this job.'

' You know why I'm here?' Arabella almost jumped on her seat with joy of finally finding someone who might help her out.

'Oh, I assure you, _everyone_ here knows. Why else would they all run off so quickly?' the lady laughed at the girl's surprised face, 'Honey, no one wants to babysit a journalist. Even less an intern.'

'I don't need any babysitting,' Arabella straightened her back to seem more confident, 'I can take care of myself. I just want to observe your...' The lady's laughter interrupted her.

'I don't want to be in the shoes of the person that leaves you here without babysitting,' the lady shook her head. 'Okay, since no one else will,' she sighed, 'my name is Ragnhild. And you'll follow me.'

***

The warm sand was falling into her shoes and at first it brought memories of holidays at the seaside with her parents. After five minutes it just got plainly annoying. The sun was warming up her neck and she was more and more certain that the sunblocking potion she used won't be enough and she'll end up with third grade burns. To make things even worse, she just started to feel a drop of sweat going down her back.

'I thought you were stationed close to the tombs?' Arabella asked, hoping she'll at least get to know for how long more were they going to walk. 

'Oh, dear, this _is_ close. Be glad you didn't catch us in Saggara. We had to get up at five to get to work until nine in the morning. That was a nightmare.' The woman didn't really sound as if she was truly unhappy about that. 'Anyway, we're almost there. See that tent? You'll go in. I'm not coming with you or else they'll think of some reason to make me take care of you. Ask for Mahir. Don't let him brush you off. It's his flipping job. See you in the evening'. The lady didn't even wait for Arabella's answer, she just turned around and walked away. The girl fought off the initial impulse to run after her and started walking towards the tent instead.

***

'I'm telling you, there is no way The Ripping Charm will work there.' As Bel approached the tent, she heard a male voice get louder and louder. 'This is, like, complex stuff. You'll get your head ripped off.' The man sounded serious, but Arabella heard another man laughing.

'So you think that if _you_ can't do it, no one can?'

'Oh, so _you_ think you're that much better? No one else can get there, but _you_ , the great Bill Weasley will?' she heard the first man again. For a moment,  Arabella considered standing outside and waiting for the men to stop arguing, but she didn't want to be caught eavesdropping on her first day, so she cautiously raised part of the tent's material and walked in. This didn't change the situation at all, the men acted as if they didn't see her, and went on discussing. The red-haired man sat on a table with his arms crossed.

'I'm not saying no one can. Philly would do it.' He shrugged, staring at the other man with tilted head and challenge in his eyes.

'Oh, so you're as good as Philly now?' The other man was standing with his back towards Bel, but by the clothes she recognized him as the guy that didn't even try to reply when she asked where to go. That made Bel cheer for the redhead in her mind.

'I didn't say that.'

'Look, Bill, you'll do what you want to do...', the man started.

'You're completely right.'

'...but better men have gotten themselves killed by such things. Just saying.' The man continued.

'I'm not reckless. I know what I'm doing,' the man referred to as Bill jumped off the table and started picking up some papers. Arabella thought it was a good moment to make herself more visible.

'Uh, hello?' she started, unsure whether the men will be mad at her for listening to the conversation.

'Oh! You're here?' the man in the turban finally turned to face her. 'How did you get here?'

'Ragnhild brought me. She told me to ask for Mahir? I'm Arabella Stingbird, an intern from the Daily Prophet. I'm supposed to write a documentary about the work of the curse breakers,' said Bel very quickly, not even stopping for breath, afraid that someone will interrupt her and tell her to leave.

'Yeah, I heard something about an intern,' said the man. 'But why would she tell you to look for me?'

'Uh... She told me that I was assigned to you. By... Philly?' replied Arabella carefully.

'You're not getting out of this one, Ma,' laughed the second man.

'Sorry, kid, I don't think I can take an intern right now. I have important... spells to check. How about you wait here and we talk in the evening, when we finish work? Maybe we'll find you a safe place to spend your time here,' said Mahir, while walking around the tent and picking up documents and strangely looking instruments from shelves and desks. At the end of his speech he had quite a pile of stuff in his hands.

' _A safe place?_ She came all this way here and you want her to sit in a tent for two weeks?' The guy called Bill asked with disbelief. 'Hey, kid, do you want to see stuff?'

'Yes!' Arabella nodded her head as quickly as she could.

'Are you afraid of stuff?'

'No,' Bel replied, trying to sound as doubtless as possible, even though she had no idea what that _stuff_ could be and whether she should be afraid of it.

'I'll take her, Mahir. She'll bore herself to death with you,' decided Bill.

'Make sure killing the boredom doesn't kill her as well,' mumbled Mahir. Or at least that's what Bel heard. She really hoped that she misheard something.

'Come on, then!' Bill exclaimed, walking out of the tent. Bel followed him, not exactly sure if that's the right thing to do. 'And don't listen to Mahir. He's always so dramatic,' he added, as they left the tent behind.

'So... it's not really that unsafe?' Arabella really hoped that she sounded less worried than she was. Bill stopped, and for a moment she was terrified that he'll decide to leave her in that tent after all. She really didn't want the guy to change his mind about taking her with him, after all he was the first person to actually want to show her something there. But on the other hand, she also really didn't want to die on her first day.

' _Unsafe?_ What are you, a first-year at Hogwarts? Of course it's unsafe, most of magic is unsafe if you don't know shit about it!' The man laughed and Arabella felt really stupid for asking that. 'But don't worry, I do know shit about it. Sure, we are curse breakers, not pygmy puffs breeders. Stuff can happen. This is no walk on the Hogwarts' grounds, there are some rules. Don't go where I don't go. Don't use your wand unless I tell you it's safe. What else... Uh, generally, do as I say, and you'll be fine as a flobberworm. Understood?'

'Yeah,' Bel didn't really feel reassured by this speech. Maybe because she had issues with trusting cocky men, ever since on her first year at Hogwarts Flavius Beetleroot claimed that he is the master of _Vingardium Leviosa_ and then got a chandelier to fall down on half of her class.

'By the way, what do I call you? Arabella is rather long.'

'People call me Bel.'

'I'm Bill. Okay, let's go and see some tombs!'

***

Luckily, they didn't have to walk as far as from the main camp to get to the tomb. _The actual tomb,_  thought Arabella. She felt excited like a kid in a candy shop, and had to remind herself all the time that she's there to work. Although, to be honest, she was a little bit disappointed by the look of it. They got through some ancient-looking corridors, but most of it was in ruin and there were just two locked chambers. The rest of it had its walls so damaged that it was pretty much see-through. Anyway, they stopped in front of the first locked door and Bill reached out his hand to stop her from approaching the door.

'Let's just... stand back a bit.' He murmured, going a few steps back. 'So, we're working on this one now,' he turned towards Bel. 'Not the second one,' he nodded in the general direction of the other locked chamber, 'That one really _is_ complex, we're waiting for Philly with it.'

'Who's Philly?' The girl has been wondering about it since she first heard about her and couldn't stop herself from asking now.

'You don't know? But you have done _some_ research, haven't you?' He looked at her with disbelief. 'Philippa Hooperswich. She's our boss. But, most importantly, she's probably the most talented curse-breaker in the world. Or, okay, in our hemisphere, Diego Villaruel rocks the South America.'

While talking, the man spread out a piece of cloth on the sand in front of the door and put out some maps along with some weirdly looking instruments on it. Arabella crouched down to take a closer look at them, especially a thing that looked a bit like a tiny snow globe that kept spinning and mixing up a shiny, smoke-like substance inside it. 

'That's a Spell Measurer,' Bill crouched down next to her, pointing to the thing she was looking at. 'Looks prettier than it's called, I know. It's barely used anywhere apart from curse-breaking camps and we are rarely poetic folk.'

'What does it do?'

'See, the thing with tombs is, most of them don't really like magic. It's as if they knew that if someone is casting too many spells around them, they are probably trying to open them up. Most of them will close up even more tightly then, or activate a trap, or do some nasty stuff to you. It's not like you can't cast one Lumos around here, it's just there's some tolerance level. And if you're unlucky, that one Lumos might be too much. That's why we have those, to keep track of how much magic has been used around. The faster it spins, the more spells have been cast recently. Right now it's at a pretty decent level, so I know I can get to work.' The man got up and took out his wand. 'Mahir said that it can rip off my head, so I hope you know some first aid.' He said and Arabella looked at him, terrified.

'I'm joking, kid' Bill laughed. 'Sit back and enjoy. There's some iced tea in my backpack, if you get thirsty, help yourself.'

Arabella sat down on the ground and realised that her palms got a bit sweaty from excitement.


	2. Independence doesn't pay

And then she spent four hours sitting on the hot sand and staring at a guy murmuring spells at closed door. Even the iced tea didn't help, she was too hot, too thirsty and too bored. Halfway through the day she even tried to ask some questions, but Bill totally ignored her, caught up in work. _Sure, keep that eye contact with the door, they might run away_ , she thought to herself. _Actually, at least that would be some change._ Now she didn't even remember what she wanted to ask, she was far too drowsy for that. She worried about how will she make a decent article out of _that._ Well, _now_ she understood why no one ever wrote about this topic, it sounded all exciting, but in the end, there was _nothing_ to write about. She was really relieved when Bill backed off from the door and announced that they were done for the day.

'That was great, wasn't it?', he asked enthusiastically.

'Really?', Bel really didn't want to be impolite, but she didn't manage to hide her primary reaction.

'Yeah, I mean... Oh, you don't get it, do you?', Bill actually looked disappointed. 'You're just another silly journalist.'

'Hey! What are you talking about?'

'Nevermind. For a moment there, I thought you were actually interested.' He sounded deeply offended and Bel couldn't really understand why was he overreacting like that.

'Because I was!'

'Oh, so you were, but you got bored? Because there were no sparks and explosions? Typical.' He shrugged and started gathering his things. 'Help me out, will you?'

Arabella started picking up the maps without saying anything. She knew she might have sounded a bit impolite or ungrateful, but on the other hand, she couldn't believe that Bill didn't see that she didn't mean that. His whole reaction seemed widely exaggerated.  She gathered the stuff in her proximity and stood up. Her feet fell asleep after sitting on them for hours. Bill piled up the rest of the stuff in his arms.

'This way, kid.'

That 'kid' sounded so condescending now, and Arabella didn't even feel like responding, she just followed the man. After a few turns, they were approaching the exit from the entire tomb complex, or whatever it was called.

'I guess it's a bit like chess,' Bill started talking, and sounded a little bit as if he was sorry about that outburst earlier. 'If you don't know what's going on, you will get bored in no time. But if you do... well, it's a battle.'

Bel didn't know what to say to it so she just let out an undefined sound to show that she was listening.

'Okay, just so you get a general image. That door we just spend a few hours in front of is locked with several charms, but they're not the most complex ones in the world. Every single one could be taken off with some simple counter-curses, like the ripping charm, the problem is, they were cast in a certain order and if I try to take them off in the wrong order... Well, they won't actually rip my head off. Probably. But I could get in trouble. So I just tried a bunch of revealing charms on them, and I think I have the order pretty much worked out now. We could get to opening them even now, but the Spell Measurer got a little anxious so it's best to leave it for tomorrow. Does it sound more exciting now?'

'Yes. Sorry about that.'

'Yeaaaah, I couldn't expect you to understand everything, could I? Though actually, you could have done some more research. There are books on that, you know?'

'I know.'

'Not much of a reader?', Bill sounded a bit judging again. Arabella decided not to get offended.

'More like, pretty rubbish at the theory of spell casting. Read some before I got here. Didn't understand a word.'

'Oh, okay. Why an article on curse breakers then?'

'It was that or the weather department in the Ministry.' She shrugged. Bill chuckled.

'I see your point.'

'So there really are traps, after all?'

'Just 'cause we haven't gotten into any, it doesn't mean that they're not there! The whole corridor we walked through used to be full of them, like a muggle mine field.'

'Like a what?'

'Nevermind. It was full of them. We got rid of those. There probably will be some more when we open the door.'

 

***

They got to the tent they left in the morning. It seemed as if the way back to the tent took much less than walking the opposite direction before. They walked in and Bel saw Mahir and some more wizards that she met in the morning. Well, maybe _met_ wasn't the best word for it.

'Just put the documents on the table.' Bill pointed, putting away his things. She did so, and Mahir immediately got to them, curious.

'So you didn't try the Ripping Charm after all?' He pointed out triumphantly.

'Not _yet._ Would have gotten to it, but the Measurer went all nuts. But I worked out the order, look.' Bill started look through all the pages. Then looked once more. He raised his head suspiciously.

'You took the page with the order, didn't you?' He asked Bel.

'I took all the pages that were near me.'

'Are you sure?' Bill started to flip through the pages again, rubbing his forehead with the other hand. 'Oh come on, that was the most important one!'

Bel looked under a table. Mahir and some other wizard started laughing.

'Shouldn't have left it with an intern. Told you, interns are just trouble.'

'Oh, I should've just took it all myself.' Bel wasn't sure if Bill sounded more mad or desperate.

'Don't worry, Billie, that'll teach you never to let interns do any actual work.' someone giggled. Bel rolled her eyes. Anyone could have lost a piece of paper and she sure wasn't useless.

'I can go back and look for it.' She suggested. Bill looked at Mahir with doubt in his eyes. The second one shrugged.

'I mean, as long as she doesn't try to actually _enter_ the chamber?'

'Yeah, we checked all the corridors already, right?'

'Yeah, we did that.'

'Okay, kid, go.' Bill didn't sound very certain. But didn't look panicked either, observed Bel, trying to calm herself down. She only offered to go because she was pretty sure they wouldn't let her do it alone. 'Just don't touch the doors. Or the walls. Or don't try to open any doors.'

'Okay.'

'And don't get lost!' She heard as she left the warmly lit tent.

 

***

Bel walked for a few minutes and felt the sand fall into her shoes again. For a moment she considered taking them off, but then she remember a chapter on scorpions in some book about animals she read when she was a kid and decided that maybe that wasn't the best idea. When she finally got to the ruins, the sun was starting to get low and everything started to get gradually darker. _If I don't hurry up, I'll have to walk back at night,_ Bel thought and started going faster.

'Okay then, I was sitting by that wall,' she muttered to herself, walking up to her old watching spot. She looked around, but she didn't see any papers on the floor.  She walked around the corridor, still didn't find anything.

'Oh, that's just great,' she whined. 'Maybe it was that door then.'

She walked up a few steps more and started searching another hall. _Why did it have to get so dark so quickly?_ , she asked in her head.

'Lumos', she whispered, because she could hardly see anything now. _There is nothing here! He must have just missed it when he was going through the papers,_ she thought and decided to go back. She went a few steps back to get a last overall look on the whole corridor. With her last step, she tripped on some bulging stone. She fell back, expecting to feel a strong hit as her back would meet the wall, but instead she went all the way down to the floor, apparently falling into some part of a corridor she hasn't noticed before. She tried to get up, but then she noticed a huge stone boulder descending approximately towards the spot where her feet were. She pulled her legs to her chest and barely avoided getting them crushed by the door. Or the wall. Whatever it was, it was now standing in the way between Arabella and her freedom.


	3. A dark, dark hole

'Come on!' shouted Bel, laying back on the floor and covering her face with hands. A feet away her wand was still giving out a faint light of the lighting charm. Apart from that, there were no more sources of light in the whole room, Bel noticed when she finally sat up and looked around. _No ways out,_ she thought to herself. Actually, not only there were there no sources of light or visible exits, but generally no other things to look at. All the walls were bare and made of boulders similar to the one that almost crushed her legs a moment ago. She was sitting on some sand, but the floor was pretty hard, she could still feel it in her back and... some lower areas, so probably if she dug for a moment, she would get to some sort of stone. Not that she was going to. The thought of scorpions was still stuck in her head. And now it was joined by the memory of Bill saying something along the lines of 'there will be traps when we open more doors'.  Was that door opened before? Did it open just to let her in and then, well, _lock_ her in?  She should have been more observant, damn, she _was_ more observant usually, but the heat and the sun and the monotony of Bill's activities must have turned off her attention. Oh, the sun! Most of the corridors lacked parts of the ceiling, maybe she was lucky enough and this room did so too, she could crawl out of there easily then. Okay, maybe not easily, but she was a substitute seeker in her Hogwarts years and she was still quite agile, so she was pretty confident that she could climb up the wall, after all it wasn't very high and had an impressive amount of cracks in it. She picked up her wand and called off the spell, fixing her eyes on the ceiling. Or, hopefully, lack of it. As soon as the warm light of her wand disappeared, she got surrounded by complete darkness, and it seemed to push into her, making the room feel even smaller and the whole situation much more scary. Bel almost casted another Lumos immediately, but she fought off the initial impulse and stayed in the darkness some more to let her eyes get accustomed to it. She was searching the ceiling for any trace of light, a visible star, or maybe some moonlight, but after a minute she still saw nothing. _Maybe the night is just very dark,_ she tried to comfort herself. _It's not really possible to tell if there are any holes in the ceiling until dawn,_ she explained to herself and cast another lighting charm. _Merlin's beard, I hope I'm not going to stay here until dawn!_ She felt a panic attack approaching, so she took a few deep breaths.

'Calm down, you idiot, in a few minutes they will realise you haven't come back yet and they will come to get you,' she told herself, closing her eyes. 'You'll have to listen to dozens of remarks about irresponsible interns, but at least you'll be in that cozy tent again.'

Oh, how she wished she could be listening to that remarks already.

***

The silence was annoying her. She sat on the floor, wand clutched in her hand, eyes closed, hoping to hear some steps or voices any moment. But there was nothing. Not only didn't she hear any human noises that she longed for, but she literally couldn't hear anything. Not even the wind, no sand moving, no owls, crickets, or whatever fauna that desert might have. Actually, maybe that last fact was good after all. It seemed that she has spend ages there until she heard _something._ At first it sounded like some incoherent mumble. Then it started resembling her name. It was very muffled, as if it went through tons of stone, but it was definitely her name. _How thick is this wall exactly,_ Bel thought to herself, but it wasn't the right time to work on this problem.

'I'm here!' She yelled at the top of her lungs, 'Here! I'm locked in a bloody tomb! Here!' She managed to stay calm up to this point, but now she felt the panic build up inside her again. 'Let me out!'

'Bel?' The voice was unrecognizable through the wall, but she assumed it was Bill, since he was the only one in the camp to ask about her pet name.

'It's me! I'm here!' Arabella repeated. 'I don't know what happened, the wall fell behind me, I'm stuck' She started shouting and very quickly she felt her voice get hoarse.

'Get! Away! From! The! Door!', someone yelled and Bel quickly went a few steps back. She heard a loud rumble and she automatically squatted and tried to cover her head. When it got quiet she opened her eyes, hoping to see an open way out. Instead, she saw the redhead studying the wall with his head tilted.

***

'What the...' she started and jumped up to Bill, 'What in Merlin's name are you doing in here?'

'Me? Oh, nothing, just, you know, saving you.' The man shrugged, and Bel couldn't tell if he's annoyed or amused.

'Okay, but why are you _in_ here, couldn't you, maybe, just get me out?' The sheer panic she felt just moments ago eased off a bit, but she was still talking very quickly and gesticulating far too much.

'Nah, I tried. And I wanted to see the room.' Bill grinned and started walking around. 'Have you touched anything?'

'No. I mean, apart from the floor.'

'Good. Smart. Well, maybe not _very_ smart, judging by that Lumos,' he pointed towards her wand, 'But not the silliest ever.'

'Lumos?'

'Yeah, you must have annoyed her with something, she wouldn't let you out. And if I had to guess, my bet would be on that bit of unnecessary magic you casted around her. But she let me in, that's a start.' He ran a finger down the wall that supposedly was actually the door, and sniffed it.

'She?'

'Bel, meet The Chamber of Wine. Or, as we call it, a pantry', he turned towards Bel and made a presenting gesture with a charming smile. 'Keep that Lumos, by the way, it's not going to do any more harm, and some light might actually help.'

'I got locked in a _pantry_?'

'Yeah, I know, how silly of you, just let me concentrate.'

'Bill?' They heard a voice through the wall again, 'Did you find the locking mechanism?'

'No! There isn't one!', Bill shouted back.

'Shit! Wait!' There was a moment of silence, and then suddenly they heard a voice again, but this time it sounded as if the person was standing right next to them. 'Damn it, Bill, that was our main hope!'

'Not really _my_ main hope, Ma. I mean, if there was one, I guess she would have figured that out.' The guy responded. He turned to Arabella. 'You were in Ravenclaw, weren't you?'

'Yeah,' Bel nodded.

'See? She was in Ravenclaw. You guys were prepared to solve locking mechanisms from the very beginning, that doorknocker thing, and all.'

'Then why on Merlin's beard did you get in there, man?'

'I don't know, it seemed fun. I wanted to get some adrenaline pumping, do you get me?' Bill giggled. Mahir groaned. Bel wanted to groan too, but she figured that groaning at the man that is her main hope of getting out of that tomb might not be the best idea.

'Besides, she's my intern. I'm responsible for her,' he murmured, walking up to the door again and staring at them as if he hoped to suddenly discover some hidden script.

Okay, definitely no groans from Bel.

***

'So if I just reversed that, and then Mahir could cast the spell from the outside, then maybe...' Bill was standing in front of the wall with his back turned to her. She was sitting on the floor in the spot that Bill assessed as _probably almost completely safe,_ and tried not to shake too much. It wasn't going too well. Her hands suddenly started shaking uncontrollably and she dropped her wand into the sand with a quiet thump. Bill glanced at her over his shoulder.

'Are you cold?' He threw his jacket at her. 'It can get cold out on the desert at night.' He turned back to the wall with a look of determination on his face. 'Okay, Mahir, I have an idea. Do you know how to cast a Concealing Spell?'

'I'm not casting anything, Bill.' Mahir's voice sounded firm. 'If we tried to cast any real spells around here right now, the tomb would bite our heads off.  The Measurer is going crazy.'

'Of course I don't mean _right now._ You and your weird obsession with losing your head.' Bill shook his head with disapproval.

'You know I'm right. What we're gonna do is contact Philly on Floo, she'll get down here and save your ass.'

'Do _not_ get Philly.'  

'What?!' Bel and Mahir exclaimed in unison.

'What I said. I can work this out. I am perfectly capable of working this out.' Bill put his hands into his pockets. Bel closed her eyes with exasperation. Her ancestors must have met someone who cursed their progeny with bad luck when it came to proud people. That must be it. She must be cursed with meeting cocky guys in her life. Otherwise _this_ would not happen to her.

'Bill, you know she's not going to kick you out...' Started Mahir, but Bill interrupted him.

'Of course she's not going to kick me out, I'm far too good.' He shrugged. 'But she'll be mad. And disappointed. And worst of all, she'll ban me from solo tasks.'

'Are you kidding?' Bel looked at him with disbelief.

'Do I look like I'm kidding?' Bill turned to her. He did not look like he was kidding. 'This would mess up my skill development.'

'You need to sort out your priorities.'

'You sound just like my mother.' He grinned at Bel.

'Well, she sounds like a smart person. Mahir? Please, _do_ get Philly, if you can.' She directed the statement at the wall, feeling a little bit silly. There was no response.

'Are you serious? You're siding with _him_?' Bill pointed at the wall. 'I'm the one who got into this shithole to save you!'

'Well, you haven't done much saving for now, have you?' Bel snapped, irritated. Bill looked utterly annoyed and a little bit hurt. 'Mahir?' She repeated, hoping to get some sort of a reply.

'Oh, he's probably already running to alert Phil.' Bill shrugged and sat on the floor. 'He'll be the second in command when I get suspended.' He still looked very offended and Bel felt a bit guilty.

'You said yourself, she's not going to fire you.' There was a hint of self-justification in her voice.

'I won't get any tombs to myself either, for a _long_ while.' He was playing with sand and looked like a kid who just got grounded.

'Okay, I'm sorry that I sided with Mahir.' She sighed.

'You didn't change much, he would have run to mummy anyway. He was just waiting for an opportunity.' For a grown up guy, this one failure seemed to get to him really much. Bel couldn't help but feel responsible for that, and well, she felt a little sorry for him.

'But you're still good. You said yourself, you would be able to open it all by yourself.' She said to cheer him up.

'Not by myself, I would have needed someone, at least for the Concealers, and...' He looked at her and it seemed like an idea started to form in his head. She raised her eyebrows, hoping that he wasn't thinking what she thought. 'Nah, that's impossible. You don't know a thing about spell theory. I could literally get us both killed.' He shook his head. Bel really didn't want him to go through with the idea, but at the same time her mind was protesting against being treated as a useless person. 'Or, actually...' Bill's eyes lit up again and he stood up. 'Can you hold a spell properly?'

'I... think so?' Bel didn't know if she liked where it was going.

'Can you or can you not?'

' I haven't done it since, like, third year. But it's quite easy, I guess?' Bel shrugged. 'Haven't done it on anything more complicated than a Carrying Spell. You know, first year, Hogwarts Express, suitcases, this kind of stuff.'

'That should do.' Bill got up and rolled his sleeves.

**Author's Note:**

> Decided that I want to see Bill Weasley at work. Started writing after a month of internship at a hospital, thinking 'hey, that's how curse breakers would react to an intern'. Hope you have as much fun with it as I had :)


End file.
